When did you get rid of the bottle?

[BrightSparkles]

When did you get rid of the bottle in your house? I'm not sure when I should start thinking about this process

[Artechim]

We just got rid of ours last week because I noticed that DS has the start of tooth decay on his front teeth from drinking a bottle at bedtime.

BTW, is your sig right? It looks like your DD is only 5 months old?

[BrightSparkles]

We just got rid of ours last week because I noticed that DS has the start of tooth decay on his front teeth from drinking a bottle at bedtime.

BTW, is your sig right? It looks like your DD is only 5 months old?

DD is 17months and i'm 5 months pg with number two.

[Curly]

The standard advice is to get rid of it at about 12 months. The reasons behind it are that this is the age where they really need to be getting more of their nutrients from food and they won't be hungry if they are filling up on milk. They should have the motor skills to drink from a sippy cup. And the sooner you get rid of it the easier it is...before it is a difficult habit to break.

I know a couple of friends who pooh-poohed this advice and are now having no end of trouble trying to get their 3 year olds to stop drinking milk from a bottle.

I got rid of the bottle with DS at 13 months, no problems. But DD simply will NOT drink milk from a sippy cup, cold, warm, flavoured, from a straw, from a spout...I've tried all combinations.

So she still has a bottle at 15 months because otherwise she will not drink milk at all and otherwise I'd be getting hardly any dairy into her...because she is not keen on cheese or yoghurt and will only eat them very occasionally. She gets 180ml in the morning when she wakes up and in the evening after bath and before bed...and occasionally an extra 180ml if she wakes up in the night and we cannot settle her back to sleep any other way. Otherwise she is a fabulous eater.

Re the teeth issue, I understand that comes from having a bottle in the cot with them and sucking themselves off to sleep and having the milk pooling around the teeth. DD never goes to bed with a bottle...she's too lazy to hold it herself anyway, bottle time = cuddle time.

She does like playing with DS' sippy cups so we are going to try again with milk in the sippy cup in a couple of months "see, just like your big brother!". I hate the bottle, I hate the messing around with teats and whatnot and I personally don't like seeing older children with a bottle...but that's just me. At the moment I feel that getting the milk into her is more important than the vessel in which it is contained but I still intend to ditch it as soon as I possibly can.

[BrightSparkles]

Thanks Curly.
She only has a bottle at sleep time (300ml at lunch and 300ml at night time) and she will usually finish it before actually getting into bed.
I might try giving it to her out of a sippy cup before she goes to bed. Shes pretty good like that.

[hj1981]

Miss B is now 15mths and has weened herself down to one bottle and thats before bed - looks like that won't be lasting for too much longer though!

[widdly]

DS was down to just a moring and night bottle at 10 months. Stopped bottles altogether at 13 months with no probs. He is nearly 4 and still has his dummies though...